Q&A: Are yes/no readings accurate?

A. As short as your question is – it is a hard one to answer. There are a lot of parts to it. There is no yes or no answer to if yes / no readins are accurate.

Before we answer that, let me ask you this: “Accurate” compared to what? Predicting the future? How are you supposed to do the impossible accurately?

Now lets go all James Caraville on this for a minute. He famously said “I’d rather not predict. I’d rather affect”. He was talking about elections, but that is precisely how I feel about psychic and tarot readings too. Predicting the future, even if it were 100% accurate and reliable, is the wrong thing to do. It puts chains on the heart and mind of the person getting the reading, planting a seed of one vision of the future…the psychic’s vision, not the vision of thier own heart and intention. I’d rather do something to help make a real difference in the way things go – to help make things better. You can’t do that with predictions. You can do that with choices and options.

The movie “The Matrix” gives us a perfect example: Neo accidentally breaks a flower vase right after the Oracle vagely mentioned it to him ahead of time. Even though she barely mentions it in passing, it was in terms of a 100% certain prediction, as if it had already happened. Does this mean the oracle made and accurate prediciton? No. Like she said, “…would you have broken it at all if I hadn’t said anythig about it?” After all he only bumped the vase after she mentioned it and he turned around looking for it.

What if predictions only come true when the person who was given the prediction chooses to look for them. Does that make the prediction accurate? Does that make the persons choice a better one?

So what good are psychic readings at all then? That’s where the James Carville part comes in. They can set you to looking for vases AND maybe help you avoid breaking them…not predicting that you will or will not look, will or will not break. They give you choices…choices you might not have noticed before. Readings let you know there is a vase in the room, so to speak, then it is up to you to choose whether to turn around a look behind you or take a big step forward.

The yes/no type reading seems to violate that principle, just by what it is. Yes/ No implies a definite answer, a prediction of what will or won’t actually happen. I try to always add “decision helper” to the title. I do these readings more in terms of should /shouldn’t do or better/worse option instead of will/won’t happen. All else being equal, should you do A or should you do B. Which is a better choice, A or B.

In the Yes / No reading that my teachor and mentor Joy Star taught me, all the cards together show you the general best direction to go…turn,step or stand still, look for a vase or ignore it. Then it goes on to look at the situation in a more thoughtful way. One card is a more definitive yes or no, but the others show other things to consider…like should you do A or should you do B, or neither one at all. Another way of looking at it is an suggested direction to go, reasons why that direction is maybe a good idea, and reasons why it might it might not be a good idea.

So are yes/no accurate? It depends. If you consider “accurate” the ability to give you good ideas or to help you make better choices, then yes, they are accurate. If you consider accurate to be predicting an actural outcome…they they are a good as guess as any, at least as good as, say, the average of three coin tosses (since we use three cards). I have no proof they are any better at statistical probablity. The good news is that Tarot readings are a lot more fun and entertaining than statistics and probablilities, so the cards have that going for them.

Which is why I still sometimes will do a “prediction” from the yes/no format. It’s all just for fun, knowing full well it has all the chance of coming true as a flip of the coin. It is as profound and spiritually significant as those paper “fortune tellers” that little girls make and those “magic 8 ball” toys that were popular when I was kid.

Are yes/no readings accurate? Not in the conventional sense, no. Are they fun? why yes, yes they are. Can they give you good ideas and help you affect your future rather than predict it? Absolutely